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Livelihood

In 2014, Government of India (GoI) made it a policy priority to improve the business environment in the country. This prioritisation derived from India's lacklustre performance on the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Index that ranks 190 countries on their business regulatory environment. Since 2003, the World Bank has measured the time, cost and regulation of entry, operation and exit for firms, and ranked countries based on these measurements and government reporting. In addition, in 2017 the IDFC Institute conducted an enterprise survey of over 3,000 manufacturing firms across India, to assess the business regulatory environment 'from the viewpoint of manufacturing firms'. However, these studies have significant gaps.
First, we do not have a deep understanding of the substantive and qualitative changes undertaken by different states. Second, ubiquitous urban services provided by micro, small and medium enterprises have found short shrift in the reporting on business climate reforms. Third, none of the studies give us a sense of the next granular steps in the reform process. Doing Business in Delhi: A Compendium addresses some of these questions for Delhi.

Due to a lack of clarity in the judicial decisions, in 2009, the Street Vendors Policy 2004 was revised as the ‘National Policy on Urban Street Vendors 2009’. The revised policy was not legally binding and made little progress on the matter of street vendors. In 2010, the Supreme Court directed the government to enact a law regulating street vending and thus, the Street Vendors Bill 2012 was drafted. The Bill was passed in both houses by February 2014 and became the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014. This Act was drafted with the legislative intent of protecting the livelihood rights of street vendors as well as regulating street vending through demarcation of vending zones, conditions for and restrictions on street vending. The Act now governs over all matters in regards to the rights and duties of the street vendors in India. It also provides for confiscation of goods that are being sold by street vendors to be cataloged properly.

It is in this context that Centre for Civil Society – a Delhi-based think tank decided to take up a study of the implementation of 2014 Act across India and come up with a matrix and an index to rank states. We filed applications under the Right to Information Act, 2005 across India, made more than 250 phone calls to expedite the RTI reply process, compiled court judgments and referred to other secondary sources such as news stories.

This paper presents case studies of two tribal villages - Mendha Lekha and Jamguda - successfully running forest-based bamboo businesses under the community forest rights provisions of Forest Rights Act (2006). We have documented the issues faced by the villagers in claiming community forest rights, issues faced in harvesting and sale of bamboo, and business practices adopted by both the villages.

Street vendors’ rights to carry on their trade in public spaces, has been the subject matter of debate and discussion in India for a very long time. In fact it has taken numerous judgments of the Supreme Court and High Court to recognize their rights and shape up a statutory regime. This scenario raises an important question, as to what is the kind of property rights enjoyed by these street vendors. A study was undertaken to analyse this aspect and answer some key questions pertaining to the gradual changes that occurred in the overall concept of property rights in India.

Against the post-New Industrial Policy (1991) growth witnessed in large-scale industries, a corresponding boom in the small and mid-sized domestic industry has been conspicuously absent. The paper seeks to document the causes for the same. Further, a comparative evaluation of Indian MSMEs with those operating in other BRICS nations will be conducted, in an attempt to understand the overall effect of the business, policy and legal/regulatory environment on the growth of MSMEs.